Interesting Alternative Splitters for PCI-E Slots from Amfeltec

14 Mar
2014

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The company Amfeltec has a lot of interesting products including some that may easily catch the attention of miners using GPUs. We are talking about the x1 PCIe 3-Way Splitter and the x4 PCIe 4-Way Splitter that allow you to split a single PCI-E x1 or more slot to three cards using x1 or a single x4 PCI-E slot to four x1 PCI-E slots for four video cards. The company also has other products that can provide you with extensions and splitters of PCI-E and other slots. These products are able to give you the ability to install more video cards for mining on a single motherboard that does not have enough PCI-E slots unlike for example the AsRock Pro BTC series of motherboards. And while these products do seem quite interesting they do have a certain drawback and that is their price that is the hundreds dollars range, so not that attractive for miners willing to optimize their cost and performance. Another possible issue might be actually getting some of these splitters in your hands as the company in question is based in Canada and they have only one distributor listed that covers UK and Europe. Still you might want to check these PCI-E splitters and not just raisers if you are interested in them.

– For more information about the GPU-oriented PCI Express splitters from Amfeltec…

Dual Mining Rewards for LTC at CEX Not So Dual Anymore

14 Mar
2014

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It seems that CEX.io did not expect so overwhelming users interest in their dual mining rewards for Litecoin mining in their new pool. The pool has almost reached 40 GHS of Litecoing mining hashrate in less than 24 hours since the announcement of the promotion for the double payout per LTC block. And in order to prevent getting 51% of the Litecoin network, now the reward multiplier will be adjusted according to the pool speed. For a total hashrate of the pool below 40 GHS the 2x multiplier will remain active, between 40 and 60 GHS the multiplier will be just 1.25x and for over 60 GHS it will will go down back to x1. And since the Litecoin pool hahrate has already gone very close to 40 GHS it is possible that soon the profitability of mining LTC at the CEX.io Litecoin mining pool might not be as good as if mining in alternative pools with automatic switching for the most profitable altcoin. So keep an eye on the pool hashrate if you have moved your Scrypt miners to the Ghash.io pool already to mine Litecoin and if the hashrate of the pool continues to rise so rapidly be ready to move back to other pools…

Update: It seems that CEX.io now wants to drive away all of the users they brought back to their pool. The 2x bonus awards that was initially without a limit and then was available with the total pool speed of up to 40 GHS has now been reduced for a pool speed of 25 GHS. We no longer recommend to stay at their Litecoin mining pool, get your miners away from there as they are really not handling the situation well… move them now and withdraw your mined LTC earnings. We don’t want to have to check every few minutes if they have changed their mind yet again and as a result to have mined less LTC that we could’ve if we used another pool with no rules that change all the time and probably neither do most of you!

Power Usage and Thermal Images of the 1-chip Gridseed DualMiner USB ASICs

14 Mar
2014

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You can read our first impressions from the DualMiner USB Scrypt ASIC here and now we took some time to take some thermal images of the miner to check the temperature adn what actually gets hot, so you can consider some extra cooling as well as to measure the actual power usage of these small USB-powered devices based on a single Gridchip GC355 processors for mining BTC/LTC. It seems that the DualMiner’s aluminum heatsink on one of the sides of the device is working quite well, the temperature it shows is quite even and goes to just aa bit short of 50 degrees Celsius. That is with the miner running for Scrypt only mining mode at 850 MHz with 70 KHS hashrate, we are not very mich interested in the combined mining mode where the device also mines for SHA-256 cryptos, note though that if you use the miner in dual mining mode it will get hotter.

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The other side fo the device’s PCB is with the chips and the two things that get hotter as expected are the GC3355 processor as well as the controller chip, so you might want to add some small cooling radiators on them in order to get better cooling. Alternatively adding a small fan like a USB one to create a good airflow or combining both things will make sure that the miner will run for longer period of time at its maximum without giving you trouble. Again this thermal images shows the miner running in Scrypt only mining mode with temperature of the chips going as high as close to 53 degrees Celsius. If you run in Dual Mode however the extra 1W of power consumption that is expected from the BTC side might increase the operating temperatures with another 10-12 degrees on top of what we are getting with Scrypt only mode.

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What about the power usage? Since these devices are designed to be powered by a USB port their maximum power usage should be no more than 2.5W (0.5A at 5V) and that can be reached in Dual Mining mode. The idle power usage of the device when it is just plugged in and running in Scrypt only mode is a bit high at 0.875W, and it only increases to 1.485W when you start the miner. So getting about 70 KHS of Scrypt mining hashrate for just about 1.5W of power consumption is a great result for the hashrate you are going to get, what is not so attractive is the price that these devices are still being sold for. Nevertheless we are very satisfied from how the single chip DualMiner SUB ASIC devices are made and work, so next in line for similar testing are the 5-chip Gridseed BTC/LTC ASIC miners.

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